Posted
by
samzenpus
on Thursday July 28, 2011 @12:09PM
from the and-the-candy-tasted-better-too dept.

asto21 writes "Cnet's Steve Guttenberg sheds light on this interesting development that over the years, actual sound quality became a secondary selling point since most people started buying their equipment either online or from big box retailers. People started caring more about the number of connections and wireless interfaces and wattage of systems. As a result, there was less money in R&D budgets to spend on advancements in sound."

Not only that , but how can a lack of R&D be to blame for a decline in sound quality?If audio quality failed to improve, you could blame it on lack of R&D, but there's got to be more to it than that for quality to *degrade* over time.With NO R&D AT ALL, at the least we should have exactly AS GOOD sound as "your dad's thirty-year-old stereo".

Not only that , but how can a lack of R&D be to blame for a decline in sound quality?
If audio quality failed to improve, you could blame it on lack of R&D, but there's got to be more to it than that for quality to *degrade* over time.
With NO R&D AT ALL, at the least we should have exactly AS GOOD sound as "your dad's thirty-year-old stereo".

I'd have to disagree. As you add more and more complexity to a device there are power drains and voltage/capcitance/current/frequency issues to be worked out.

To put a bad analogy on it.. it's like saying "Lets add a 1000W lamp to this wall socket and not expect anything bad happen to the Audio on the same circuit." Talk to any sound engineer (read non-audiphile subscriber) and they will have tons of stories on how fickle sound set ups can be when no one knowledgeable is watching the setup and correcting things.

True, but it's not like you need good sound quality anymore. In fact, you'd probably want the opposite considering how mastering a track nowadays seems to involve going to the sound board and jamming every slider and dial up as high as it'll go.

Dad still plays on his 30 year old stereo 30 year old music. Not a lot of wrong notes (or mixer catastrophes) on Dark Side of the Moon. Goes well with a 30 year old whiskey, too.

In my case, the amplifier is a NAD 7040 and a small pair of B&W S3. The NAD doesn't give a damn about driving 4 ohms. This speaker is reputed to be 8 ohms at most, and well less than 8 ohms over fairly wide sub bands.

I'd love to upgrade the caps, but my own caps are going, and dentists aren't cheap.

You can't tow a boat with a Prius, and you can't expect a bunch of ICs and cheap 50 cent components to properly amplify anything for any reasonable amount of time or at a decent volume. If your amplifier doesn't weigh on the order of your dad's old one, you're not going to get the same sound out of it. Everything about amplification and electronic theory was known and done as of about thirty years ago. There is no magic. Only trickery and marketing.

The biggest lie of them all is wattage. 95%+ of the time, they state wattage as maximum through one speaker. So that 200W 7 channel amplifier is actually only putting out about 29W to each speaker, maximum. But distortion and heat will limit you to about half of that continuously, or about 15W per channel. Given that typical speakers are about 87-89db efficient, that means that you net a pathetic 90db or so that's actually usable. While this is still quite loud, it's far below what you really need for good home theater. Most people try to compensate for this by turning up the volume, but all that really does is bombard them with more and more high frequency sound since the bass long ago disappeared. This, naturally, leads to listening fatigue and hearing damage. The older amplifiers were rated as typically 100W per channel or more, and could deliver about 80% of their maximum rated volume without any problems. They did not get weak under heavy loads or strong bass, either.

This also applies to the most critical aspect of the system, the speakers. You simply cannot convey a full sound through miserable little 5 or 6 inch speakers. And a single subwoofer is a poor way to fill in for a weak mid-range and missing low-end. You don't play your guitar or bass through a 6 inch cabinet, but somehow people forgot to use common sense. So often you have a decent amplifier hooked up to junk speakers. You "father's system", I bet, has 8 or even 12 inch woofers in the main speakers, as this was common back in the 70s and 80s. In order to produce a convincing sound, you need to move air and create enough sound pressure. Or else it sounds like your neighbor's stereo does from down the street - tinny and distant.

But all of this is truly ancient news. People were discussing this twenty years ago or more online.

This is generally true, however with switching supplies and Class-D amplifiers, really good sound is available from feather-weight amps. A LOT of attention needs to be paid to filtering, switching frequencies, fast diodes, shielding, load compatibility, etc, but assuming these issues are competently addressed, a light-weight amp can sound good and have plenty of grunt.

Cost cutting yes, op amps not necessarily. With a correctly chosen op amp in a correctly designed circuit, sound as good as or better than discrete designs is possible. Unfortunately, too many designers assume that a TL071 or an NE5534 in a garden variety topology is sufficient. It isn't.

The biggest lie of them all is wattage.

I'd say that the biggest lie is THD. Not that the spec'd THD figure is incorrect, (that's another issue), but that THD is a poor predictor of sound quality. Distortion figures of 0.1% or more are appalling to the average audio engineer; however if the harmonic content is mostly low-order and mostly even-order, an amp with this much distortion, or even more, can sound wonderful. On the other hand, an amplifier can have a 0.001% distortion spec and sound truly awful. This happens when a circuit that is inherently highly non-linear is given a low THD spec by using copious amounts of negative feedback. This causes lots of high-order odd harmonics, which are subjectively much, much more objectionable; the THD spec is good, but the amp sounds harsh and sterile. Even in the 1940's this problem was recognized, and highly respected audio engineers suggested that THD be calculated by weighting harmonics according to the square, or even the cube, of their order. These engineers were ignored by an industry that was increasingly driven by specsmanship and cost-cutting rather than by sound quality.

You simply cannot convey a full sound through miserable little 5 or 6 inch speakers.

If you're talking about overall speaker size then you are correct, however if you're talking about just the driver size then there's an experience you've missed. A good full-range driver in the 4-to-6 inch range, (an expensive Lowther driver, or even a fairly cheap Fostex), in a nice big cabinet that horn-loads the back of the speaker, can produce surprising amounts of bass and an overall magical sound.

Op-amps come in thousands of flavors, they each have hundreds of performance parameters, at least half a dozen of which need to be considered even in a first-pass design. Common types of op-amps in low-power signal paths are usually much better than transistors even when given 1/10th the component count and 1/10th the design effort of a discrete circuit. Used by a real expert, they can do things that couldn't be done at all with discrete circuits.

It really doesn't matter. I used to discuss this over a decade ago on Usenet and nothing has changed aside from the smoke an mirrors getting a bit more pretty looking. But I am glad to impart some basic information if it will help someone decide upon a good home audio system.

In case anyone else is reading this, basic guidelines for an amplifier today are:1 - at least 20lbs weight.2 - Able to drive 6 ohm speakers. The speakers optimally will be front-ported or sealed. (bouncing the bass off of the corner behind the speaker and back at you is very inefficient). The speakers should have no smaller than 6 inch woofers( 5 if it's a very good or special design). 8 for the mains is nice as it makes a sub somewhat optional. This is exactly like car audio in that 4 inchers generally sound like crap.3 - your speakers for your surround system should cost the same as the rest of the system, at a minimum. This does not include the subwoofer. Typical pricing for good speakers is about $100-$300 per speaker. Cheaper than that and quality suffers greatly. You don't need to spend more than that, though, to get good sound. Stay away from Best Buy and big box type retailers unless you know what you are doing. B&W, Tannoy, and Paradigm are good examples of moderately priced speakers that perform very well. Even their lowest-cost lines will more than suffice for most people's needs and completely crush any "home theater" set for sale at a major retailer/outlet.4 - the sub should be a proper dual-coil design and be at least 10 inches in diameter. It should, of course, have its own amplifier so as to not overwork the main unit. Be sure to plug it into the same circuit as the amp or use an isolator to keep ground-loop hum out of the equation. I personally like Sunfire, though YMMV.

I can't remember the specific article I read, but hopefully the Loudness War is coming to an end because of the rise of digital streaming (and their normalization and other volume adjusting algorithms), but who knows, that could start a Dynamics War.

It's actually worse than that -- the raw mix is probably fine. The mastering engineer has the dial cranked on the compressor -- that's how you turn a 24-bit master into a 16-bit CD or MP3 with, if you're lucky, 8-bits of actual dynamic range.

Of course, if that were true of all music, it might put upward pressure on ensuring a low THD on the amplifiers, even if dynamic range weren't important.

Some places, like HD Tracks, sell music with much better mastering... sometimes even no audio compression at all. I h

As a sound engineer, I'm curious what a "voltage/capcitance/current/frequency issue" is? I was mostly with you up until the frequency part.

The things that have been added to stereos (mostly surround processing, some simple source switching, and D/A converters) since the 70s aren't huge power sucks to the extent they would cause amplifiers to sound worse.

it's like saying "Lets add a 1000W lamp to this wall socket and not expect anything bad happen to the Audio on the same circuit."

Your dad's 30-year-old stereo was probably well-made and sort of expensive if it's still in good condition now. A cheap stereo you bought at Walmart is not. The gear being sold today has inferior components.

Exactly. It's not like they still carry my old stereo from yesteryear. As the article says, they spend less since people are not willing to spend as much. I noticed the same decline in electronic shops. Back when microcomputers came out it was easy to find a store to buy quality components and have a good selection.Now the only one that seem to still be in business is RadioShack. Not exactly what it was a few decades ago either.

I listened to a 5.1 system my daughter had and it was kinda OK when watching a movie. But once you turned on quality music - yikes!

It was very surprising to hear how a 5.1 system could sound so bad. Which was mostly due to the crappy speakers they included. I got spoiled with studio equipment and could never listen to anything less without being disappointed. Of course everyone wanted to know what I thought of Their stereo. About which one has to get very clever on how one answers. My reply ended up being that they sound pretty good for what they paid. Unless they actually wanted to know the truth.

If you don't actually sit and listen to a good system, or live music, it's not that easy to realize what it should sound like. With all the get everything from the comfort of your own home, that becomes harder and harder. Yeah, my 30 old system sounded a lot better (though only with two speakers) than todays average 5/6/7.1 systems.

Quality is not either subjective. How accurately can your equipment reproduce a sound? Your taste is subjective but that's another story.Marketing does affect what people buy, especially when they can't tell the difference.

Uh, yeah there is. People want to change the inputs, outputs, add HD radio, blah blah blah. Now, do that while keeping the original audio quality intact. I have a stereo from 1988, 1996, and 2006.

There is a noticeable audio quality drop off when listening to CD between them as time goes on, and I paid more and more for them because I wanted to get something I could listen to and even brought a few home in 2006 that I had to return the next day they sounded so awful when I was listening to my music (and not

(before the deficiencies of CD mixing or mp3 encoding)- Sound comes out of a digital player using a 1-bit DAC. A consumer 1-bit DAC can't beat a 16-bit DAC PERIOD. It's like comparing the image quality of a webcam to a DSLR (a 1-bit DAC can beat a 'proper' DAC if using a very high frequency).- sound circuit: Most modern amplifiers use 1 or 2 chips (being one power chip). Very high gain (and very high feedback). P

I think one of the biggest issues is the gap in price between good products and low end stuff. I want my music to sound good and I'm willing to buy something that is 3x the cost of the everyday / low end equipment. But instead I'm given the choice between low end equipment or pro-awesome-blow-your-mind stuff that is 10 times more expensive, with nothing in between. I would love the more expensive stuff, but I just can't afford a 10,000 worth of stereo gear.

It is actually amazing how good modern speakers can sound. If you buy higher end hardware these days it is damn impressive. However it costs more. Not more than it used to, just more than the cheap stuff.

This article is stupid because it is looking back and pretending as though 30 years ago HiFi sets were common and cheap. Not hardly. They were expensive and rare. Take the price you'd pay for one, adjust for inflation, and then see what you'd get with your money today. You'd probably be pretty impressed. Please remember that $500 in 1980 is $1,305 today. You can get a pretty heavy hitting receiver for that kind of cash.

Also 5/7.1 has to be taken in to account. Receivers are asked to do more these days, not even taking in to account the stuff he's whining about. Time was they were just amplifiers and preamplifiers for two channels, and maybe a tuner. Now they do all that for 5, 7, or more channels and handle decoding of digital formats, crossovers, maybe room correction, and so on. For all that, they still sound good, amps are not often your problem in sound quality (speakers are).

He seems to be whining that they can't make quality cheap. Well, too bad. That is a frequent problem. Quality costs money. You want quality sound? Go buy it. I love my system, it is extremely good sounding. However it did run me like $6,000 for a 5.1 setup. Don't want to spend that much? I totally understand, but you can't then cry that a $600 system doesn't sound as good.

And when your friends come over checking the system out, they might ask, "Why does the speaker manufacturer's name have an exclamation point at the end of it?" You tell them, "Because when you're throwing a party and someone asks, 'What kind of speakers are those?' you're going to have to yell, 'CERWIN VEGA!'"

Quality is mostly subjective anyway. Good marketing has a much bigger influence on your subjective impression of quality than actual linearity in response and low noise floor. We got to the point of diminishing returns on audio quality decades ago.

Well to a point is is subjective.But sitting blindfolded 10 feet away from a single violinist and two very expensive speakers powered by a very expensive tube amp back in the early 80s and NOT being able to tell the difference convinced me that "its all subjective" argument is mostly an excuse.

Switching in a transistor amp was immediately noticed.Switching in different mics was obvious.Switching in the Moster cables, - not so much.

We have backed off so far from the point of diminishing returns since then. Of course my ears have backed off a bit too over the decades.Never the less, you really can't compare the output of any modern digital sound chip driving earbuds from an mp3 to to analog soundfrom tubes into big speakers or even studio quality headphones and waive the difference away as "subjective".

No, it's not mostly subjective. Good sound quality is science. Range, signal purity, response, these are all measurable things.

Good marketing will over ride reason. People care less for quality then they do for price, and when you are looking at a 2000 dollars system next to a 500 dollar system people need to ask them selves if the value they get from the better quality is worth 1500 dollars.

In acoustics measurement and audio engineering the criteria are completely objective, and the only thing that really matters is linearity. Unfortunately these are generally the very expensive systems because essentially nothing about loudspeakers is actually linear, in particular a loudspeaker voice coil is only approximately linear for small excursions where the magnetic field lines are approximately linear.

Sound quality on the other hand is highly subjective and people generally prefer a moderate amount

I think it is a different on how we approach music today. Back 30 years ago, the age of Mr. Boom Box in public booming their music for all to hear and get pissed off at (Like in Star Trek IV). Today our music choice is more of a private thing, we take all our music and put it on a little device and with headphones we can listen to it. Yes sound quality of an MP3 Player is less then those old stereos but you are not trying to over power the rest of the world with your sounds, so you really don't need it.

Solid state is much more linear and low noise than any tubes could hope to be. You might think they sound "better" because you like the characteristics of the distortion they produce. But that's unrelated to what we normally consider audio quality.

Yea but if it was what people preferred, then it was better. And it was what people preferred except for portables and car radios.

Up to about the 1950's, radio companies did not care what % distortion an amp had; they experimented with different amp circuits and depended mainly on polls of ordinary people listening and choosing which one sounded better. It is possible to design a tube audio amp with a very low amount of distortion {--tube amps are still used as the final stage of radio broadcasting system

Sound quality is still a selling point to people who want it, and those people will still find a wide selection of good quality components. However most consumers dont want to deal with setting up expensive speaker systems and finding the 'sweet spot' in the room etc. They just want a box that noise comes out of, and thats what they purchase.

I’d also like to throw into the pile the complete obsession with bass in the current generation. It seems to have become the major selling point of speakers at the expense of the mid and high ranges. I like to feel my rib cage rattle as much as anyone else, but I also like those sharp, crystal clear highs.

And it’s of course mandatory to point out that current music sucks, and kids these days only listen to low quality mp3 versions of it anyway and no one has an appreciation for proper sound reproduction and other such “get off my lawn” arguments;p

I’d also like to note that modern speakers aren’t big enough! I don’t care about volume (personally I don’t like stuff ear-bleeding loud) but my dad’s huge (up to my neck) floor speakers have a presence that you just don’t get with the modern stuff I’m guessing because they just move more air due to their size.

it's not so much about more air, it's frequencies. The ability to reproduce low end frequencies is directly dependent on the actual size of the speaker, which is why subwoofers have to be so effing huge. But we didn't used to have subwoofers; we had tower speakers, which are big enough that they can incorporate a woofer capable of decent low frequencies. All things being equal, a single speaker producing a full range of frequencies will sound better than two separate speakers (bookshelf plus separate subwoofer). So a pair of floorstanders is going to sound better than two bookshelves and a smallish subwoofer.

These days the real high end setups use a couple of floorstanders for everything down to about 50Hz, and a real bigass subwoofer for 10Hz through 50Hz, which is truly non-directional. But most people (including me) use a couple of bookshelves for 100Hz and up, and a 10-12" subwoofer which can probably do about 30-100Hz. (Or, they have bookshelves and a subwoofer and completely mess up the configuration of the cutoff point, which is probably more common and the reason lots of people's systems sound crappy). The bookshelves plus subwoofer setup can sound pretty good if you're careful about the cutoff point and the phase and everything, but never quite as nice as a good pair of floorstanders.

Bigger speakers are generally going to have more presence because the speaker drivers themselves have better impedance with the air at low frequencies, and the heavier drivers tend to be more efficient at that frequency range. A good 10-12 inch driver should be able to get all the way down to 20hz, which is about the limit of human hearing; (though frequencies below that can still be felt.) With a modern speaker using a smaller 6 inch driver to produce low frequencies, the bottom end of the range will either be lost, or it will have to be normalized to the midrange; doing so tends to induce distortion.

More or less the top-of-the-line in consumer grade speakers is the Klipschhorn, which horn loads the tweeter and midrange, and uses the interior of the cabinet and your wall to horn load the woofer. The horns again deliver better impedance with the air, making it one of the most efficient speakers on the market. It's capable of producing 105db of sound from one watt of input power.

For what it's worth, I'm in my late 20s and grew up listening to a lot of the classics. I love Zep, and a number of others. There's good stuff coming out now too, but if all you do is listen to the radio, you're unlikely to hear it.

The problem is that most people don't actually like realism. Look how many people complain about fluorescent or LED lighting being "too white" instead of "warm" like their traditional incandescent lamps. You see it in photography too: people like saturated colors. Show someone a nice photo that hasn't been retouched, and then the same photo after having the colors saturated a little in photoshop, and see which one they prefer. Same goes for sound: stereos have had "loudness" buttons for decades, which b

Most people buy wine to catch a buzz and are primarily concerned that the product contains sufficient alcohol and isn't totally repulsive. Some people can, or think they can, taste a difference and will pay more. Some people are concerned with impressing their guests and buy expensive stuff with a famous label whether it tastes better or not.

A large part of it has to do with training and the effort one puts into it. That being said, few people really need pro audio gear that aren't professionals and nobody needs audiophile gear. You very quickly reach the point of diminishing returns even with amazing hearing.

The folks who spend more are frequently more interested in appearance than actual use.

Like wine, sure there are some subtle differences between "normal" and "high end". However all that is lost when you mix it with coke, juice, or whatever you favorite is. If you don't like to drink straight up, then don't bother wasting you money making Grey Goose Screwdrivers or Patron Margaritas...

I buy expensive Vodka cause the cheap stuff makes me gag. I can taste the difference so I imagine it's just as easy for someone to taste the difference in wine.

Yes, there are vast differences in wine. (Of course quality does not increase monotonically with price.) As for you vodka, you can take the cheap stuff, pour it through a Brita filter 3 times, and the result will be the premium stuff. No lie.

Even cheap wine can taste "okay" but the difference between a $5 bottle and a $40 one isn't so much a matter of taste as it is complexity. Cheap wines have no personality. They have one note, one flavor, and while that flavor may be a good one, it's the only thing you're going to taste. A good wine, on the other hand, has a very complex taste that changes over the course of ten to twenty seconds, with at least three distinct change in flavors (nose, body, finish), and which may or may not have anything t

I agree with everything but the Grey Goose. Sorry, but the French cannot make decent vodka. Belvedere is my favorite - the Polish sure know their vodka.

I like vodka the best because the idea is to distill out everything as much as possible. No flavorings or aging in flavored barrels or any other gimmicks to cover up the taste. Just make it as pure as possible and enjoy.

Mythbusters actually tried it. Busted. After multible filterings, the apparent taste of the vodka was slightly improved for the professional taster judge... but still nowhere near the quality of a more expensive vodka, plus it cost a lot in filters.

Actually, the old adage is false. You don't get what you pay for. You pay what the market will bear for a given product. Perhaps, a car analogy will help.

If you bought a new car in 1993, perhaps you decided between a Chevy and a Toyota. On average, the Toyota was of higher quality, and cheaper. But, perceptions take a long time to change, and you might have been basing your perceptions on the quality of a Toyota built in 1978, rather than one built in 1993. So, you may have purchased the more expensive Chevy because "it's better, after all it's more expensive", and you would be wrong.

Or, what if I offered to sell you one of two identical paintings. One, I told you was painted by Van Gogh, the other is a knock-off I produced. Which would you pay more for? Keep in mind, these are identical paintings on identical canvases.

There have been many studies done on the wine thing, and while your perceptions convince you there is a difference, it mostly doesn't exist. The expensive wine tastes better to you because it is expensive, not the other way around.

So, yes if you insist that between two essentially equivolent products, the spendier is obviously better, it is probably the result of snobbery.

Re: cigarettes.Nat Shermans are not a good example. They're dry, and not very good tobacco IMO. For a good pre-rolled cigarette, the Davidoff Magnums are (were?) in a different league. Dunhill Internationals are pretty good, though they used to be better. The old Three Castles rolling tobacco was far better than anything else - it was like blond hair. It hasn't been available for a long while but there are some imitations out there. Even Bugler rolling tobacco is far better than anything you can get in a re

99% of popular music sounds like crap on any audio equipment. Engineers severly compress the audio dynamic range in order to make everything louder. The result is crap sounding music. You may also want to disable the virtual tin can mode on the DSP settings.

After working at Kodak for 26 years in electronic imaging and hearing nothing but "IMAGE QUALITY", I am now faced with a world where everyone is taking crappy pictures with crappy cell phone cameras. Why did we bother?? As in the stereo world, cost and convenience trump what used to be important.

everyone? In my circle, ownership of DSLRs seems to be going up quite rapidly.

I think there's more a spreading of the market to extremes; medium-quality compacts are getting squeezed out by cameraphones at the low end where you really just want a rough reproduction of some event, and DSLRs and interchangeable lens, large sensor compacts at the high end. (Boy, I can't wait for the NEX-7).

I have a big bulky DSLR... in a camera bag... at home. I also have a camera/phone in my pocket, ready to take a picture any second of the day. Guess which ones takes more shots? Image quality is far less important than image content -- interesting things happen suddenly and rarely wait around for me to run home and get my good camera. Cost isn't nearly as much of an issue as convenience. Remember: the best camera is the one you have in hand, ready to shoot. Of necessity that one is usually going to be small, fast, expendable, and therefore relatively low-quality.

Not silly, but maybe an old-guy rant. Never worked on film cameras, just solid-state stuff. You could get a decent photo from 110 format, but disk had no redeeming value except, well, nothing. I remember going to a talk where the benefits of the disk system were explained. Lots of theory about how the system covered more of the photographic space. When I finally got one, I realized that every picture was of uniformly mediocre-to-poor quality. At least with a 110 camera you could get pretty good photos

Your work was probably instrumental in making the $2 chip behind the tiny lens capable of taking pictures as good as a 35mm point and shoot and making a $500 DSLR take *better* pictures than any 35mm film camera.

Right up through most of the 1990s power ratings differentiated models within a given manufacturer's lineup, but that's barely true anymore. In those days the least expensive models had 20 or 30 watts a channel, but now most low- to midprice receivers have around 100 watts per channel. For example, Pioneer's least expensive receiver, the VSX-521 ($250) is rated at 80 watts a channel; its VSX-1021 ($550) only gets you to 90 watts: and by the time you reach the VSX-53 ($1,100) you're only up to 110 watts per channel! Doubling the budget to $2,200 gets you 140 watts per channel from their SC-37 receiver. Denon's brand-new $5,500 AVR-5308CI delivers 150 watts per channel! The 31-year-old Pioneer SX-1980 receiver Butterworth wrote about was rated at 270 watts per channel. He tested the Pioneer and confirmed the specifications: "It delivered 273.3 watts into 8 ohms and 338.0 watts into 4 ohms." It's a stereo receiver, but it totally blew away Denon's state-of-the-art flagship model in terms of power delivery!

Emphasis mine. So I noticed that you didn't adjust the SX-1980's price into 2010 dollars so let's ask Wikipedia [wikipedia.org] about the cost of an SX-1980 in today's dollars:

Its retail price in 1978 was $1295.00. According to the average historical price of gold, it would have listed for an equivalent of $8199.42 in 2010.

Okay. Show me that industry wide receivers that cost in excess of eight grand are vastly inferior to the SX-1980 and we'll have a conversation. What's the Yamaha RX-V1800 cost these days? One grand? Am I surprised your blind listening test found something that costs over eight times that amount sounds better?

Here's what you're noticing: the market of people who want to sink ten grand into a receiver (just the receiver alone!) isn't big enough for them to waste their time making the absolutely perfect everything just in the name of sound quality. You're going to design the circuit board and power output entirely devoted to sound quality? Not if you're only going to sell a hundred units.

I have a lot of audiophile friends but I don't often hear "Gee, I wish they sold an eight thousand dollar receiver devoted to sound quality so I could really blow some money to climb from the 90th to 98th percentile of sound quality."

Okay. Show me that industry wide receivers that cost in excess of eight grand are vastly inferior to the SX-1980 and we'll have a conversation. What's the Yamaha RX-V1800 cost these days? One grand?

I'd also like to point out that the RX-V1800 is rated at 170W x 7 channels for a total power output of 1,190W, compared to the 273W x 2 for the SX-1980. How much more would the SX-1980 have cost if it had to output twice the wattage at the same other specs (frequency response, THD, etc.)?

I can tell the difference between $3 and $6 headphones. The sound distortion on the cheapest ones is horrible and they're not worth using. But I can't tell the difference between the $6 and the $20 headphones. I'd need to jump up to the $100 range to get another radical improvement in quality. Since I don't have that sort of cash lying around, I am content to use the $6 headphones. They work, that's all they need to do.

It was taught to respect it's elders, not like these young punk stereos you see walking around with their pants hanging off their butts. And, MY dad's stereo mowed the lawn every week without having to be told. Don't you know that builds character??

Mass market digital began the decline in audio fidelity with the advent of the audio CD. At a sampling rate of only 44.1 KHz, it's incapable of resolving enough detail at the upper range of human hearing to sound natural. Coupled with the dithering added in the D/A conversion process to mask inherent sampling noise you have a format with harsh sounding highs and a severely constrained soundstage. Even when factoring in all of the obvious faults of analog vinyl records, a top-end analog system with a decent

1. In an age of digitally compressed music (MP3s, Ogg, even ATRAC, and others) true fidelity is a wast of money. The source is so relatively awful that good gear cannot fix the problems. And actually, if you are listening to most pop/rap/hiphop/etc music, it's been so worked over in the studio that you're wasting your dynamic range. Headroom for these genres is measured underneath your steering wheel. That audience doesn't care.

2. Much gear is build with integrated power stages, which just don't compare

Heh heh... Reminds me of a theory a friend of mine has. We went to several of a series of free outdoor concerts recently, and for every one - regardless of genre - they had the volume turned up so loud that we had to move back 50 yards from the stage just to hear it properly. Seriously, a folksy singer/songwriter? Turn it up to 11! His theory was that the sound guy's hearing was shot from decades of working rock concerts, and he was just setting the volume to what sounded good to him.

In all seriousness, I'm not sure why anyone should listen to this Steve Guttenberg, either. He's one of those Stereophile kooks who loves to go on about how much better things sound once you add that $1000 speaker cable to the system.

Besides, if he really thinks 30 year old stereo systems sound better, what is he doing raving about modern ultra-high end electronics, speakers, and *cables* in his reviews, anyway? I'm pretty sure my Dad didn't pay $1000 for his speaker cables, and I'm pretty sure someone tr

The article's general argument (I know, I know) is that adding in all the whizbang features like Bluetooth connectivity and HD Radio, and the licensing fees involved has eaten up all the money to the point where there's little left for R&D for clearer audio. I think the problem is simpler than that, and twofold.

First, people by and large no longer actively listen to music. We listen while doing something else. Whether that 'something else' is driving, jogging, cleaning, working, or whatever else...it's no longer a sit-down activity like it was in the past. I'd argue that the most common audio output device is the iPod earbuds. They sound pretty decent for bundled earbuds, but that's like congratulating Apple for making the prettiest Terminal window for OSX. Point is, even a $500 Sony receiver with its bundled speakers is going to sound better than/that/. It's actually going to sound a LOT better than that. The floor is much lower than it was 30 years ago, therefore, it doesn't take the same amount of audio quality to greatly surpass it.

Second, most people when stereo shopping are looking for something that sounds "very good". Being as the majority of said consumers are pretty easy to please in that regard according to point #1, now Sony has to distinguish itself between Yamaha and Denon and Onkyo when they're shown next to each other. How do you do that in a way that prints well on shelf tags? Answer: good luck. That's where the arms race of having 1,001 connectors, bluetooth, XM, Pandora, laser light shows on the front, spiffy animations, 1,000,001 EQ settings, pseudo-surround from the stereo speakers, etc. all comes in to play: Bluetooth vs. no Bluetooth is very easy to distinguish. Wattage numbers are very easy to compare. "Sounds better than..." is both subjective and difficult to determine, so fighting over it would ultimately put everyone on a similar playing field. While the Slashdot Cynicism would say that it's because no one wants to have next quarter's numbers suffer on account of "doing it right", to be fair to them, how many Best Buy employees - even the ones in the home theater department - would YOU trust to accurately showcase the difference between how the different receivers sound? Have you EVER been in one where the routing panel buttons actually routed the signal properly? I haven't.

I'll use myself as a perfect example. I spend enough time in my car to replace the perfectly working stock stereo with an aftermarket one. When it came time to shop, I at least went to a store that specializes in auto and marine audio and skipped over Wal-Mart and Best Buy. I got Boston Acoustic speakers and a Kenwood deck. What attracted me to the deck was its price tag ($200 was about what I was looking to spend; the higher priced units were closer to $500-$600 and had the in-dash flat panels and navigation, etc), and its feature set. It was really nice to have a USB port and an aux in; I could charge my phone and recognize music stored on it, and I could play Pandora and make hands-free phone calls with the aux in jack. It was beautiful. A friend of mine who is one of those "Boom Car" owners - you know the type, the ones who you wouldn't exactly want leading the charge in a "surprise attack" that give you a back massage at a red light, even though you're in the opposite lane and three cars back. He had a Pioneer deck that he sold me for $60, and even did the installation for me (I installed the Kenwood, I just couldn't be bothered this time around lol). It doesn't have the USB port, the FM radio reception is mediocre on a good day (I swear that Kenwood could pick up a transmission from Mars), and I still haven't figured out how to set the preset stations for which it has no buttons (the presets are cycled through the general purpose knob, which can require a bit extra nudge at times). Every time I'm in my car I debate going back to the Kenwood deck because the Kenwood does basically everything I want it to do (except bluetooth, but neither does the Pioneer). I still haven't

Sure - I remember my Dad's 30 year old radio, a Philco model 60 [antiqueradio.org] from 1936. Those thirty years were the the golden age of radio I caught just the tail end in the late1950's.

His cathedral radio glowed in the dark, thanks to 5 vacuum tubes and an incandescent dial lamp. Took a minute to warm up (boot?) thanks to the 6 volt filaments and sagging line voltage (the thing drew 60 watts just idling). Superhetrodyne tuning of the AM broadcast band gave it a response from perhaps 50 to 2000 Hz, give or take 10 db. Stereo? Naw it didn't even have FM (though you could tune in shortwave broadcasts from Moscow)

Fidelity? Well, the Lone Ranger theme came boomed in just fine, as did Jack Benny, Elvis, Carl Perkins, Jerry Lee Lewis, Buddy Holly, Ritchie Valens, and the Big Bopper. Nothing like staying up late to tune the latest releases from WKBW, CKLW, or WABCs Cousin Brucie. Or joining the Night People to catch Jean Shepherd on WOR after midnight.

I've heard plenty of music since then, on vinyl, cassette, 8-track, CD's and mp3 -- great stuff! But I miss the excitement of stalking the elusive Rock and Roll station...

Sometime in the early 20th century RCA did an experiment where they had people come into a room where opera music was playing. They had the test subject adjust two dials until the music sounded 'best'.

The result was half the subjects turned both dials all the way down. The other half adjusted the dials to the midpoints.

The two dials were for treble and bass. Half the test subjects were people who went to a lot of live opera performances. The other half where people who listened mostly to the radio. The live listeners adjusted the dials to the midpoint, matching the sound they usually listen to. The other half listened over the radio. They adjusted the dials all the way down because that's how radio sounds.

The moral of the story- what "sounds best" depends a lot on what you think "sounds best", and is not necessarily a measure of accurate sound reproduction.

dcc never took off afaict. DAB doesn't seem to be doing that well either.

OTOH online sales of music with lossy compression have really taken off...

Even more disturbing is the prospect that data compression may be used in professional applications to make master recordings. It's conceivable that the majority of recorded music will be subject to some form of data compression in as little as ten years. Consequently, data compression is not merely a mass-market mid-fi system avoidable by the serious listener. Like it or not, we will all be subject to bit-rate–reduced digital audio.

Afaict this may have happened for a while with minidisc but more recently the trend has been towards doing everything on computers in uncompressed 24/96 or 24/192.

The large frequency-response irregularities found in car stereos, for example, could skew the spectral content of the signal, thus revealing the enormous errors hiding beneath the wanted signal. I wouldn't be surprised if there were an official mandate banning graphic equalizers on Digital Audio Broadcasting car stereos!

This fear seems to have been unfouded, the general consensus seems to be it's easier to detect lossy compression on high qu

CD's are digital and are very, very good audio quality. The one issue is what happens when you are out of range. CD's just cut off the audio while analog media tend to just attenuate it (i.e. twice as loud as represented as 1.8 times as loud, 1.4 times as loud).

True, but I think the mastering, more so than the encoding, has damaged alot of popular music.

If we take a look at how most people listen (cheap earbuds) and master to make that sound "acceptable" in order to get record sales, then those who would listen on quality gear are going to hear something completely different. The low end is overly emphasized in certain ranges, to compensate for the inability of the speaker to actually replicate that sound.

The other major issue is speakers. Most folks didn't notice the quality, or lack of, with the iPods mainly because most folks listened with the bundled ear buds. Leading to among other things an inability to distinguish the various sounds being produced and permanent hearing loss.

I noticed when I moved up to a decent set of Sennheiser headphones a few years back for at home that I was missing most of the music previously as the headphones and speakers just couldn't adequately replicate the sounds.

Most audio comes at the same sample rate and bit-depth as CD or DAT, while there is no excuse whatsoever why this should not be increased to 192kHz/24bit or higher,

Other than there's no need, as the human ear isn't sensitive enough to tell any difference between that and 44 kHz/16 bit. That already gives better frequency reproduction and much better SNR than the vinyl that audiophiles seem to love. The problem is that most CDs aren't mastered well enough to take advantage of the medium's capabilities.